By Tan Yek Keak

IT'S been eight years, man, since Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in 2001, where Harry first went to school, learnt how to grab a broomstick between his legs and was relieved to know that as a confused, shy young man, he was not to turn into Harriet Potter.

Let me tell you what eight years mean. It's two World Cups, three marriages and four divorces to some people.

You know how people say, oh, how fast kids grow these days? Well, I just saw Pothead and the Half-Blood Prince, and I can tell you that the two boys - Harry and his buffoonish best pal, Ron - are now strapping young dudes while Hermione, the girl, has transformed Megan Fox-style into Hormonal the babe. Wowza.

I'm a Jurassic Park dinosaur but growing with these kids in themovies, I tell you, is like raising my own children. I feel like Michael Jackson (pre-all star memorial, of course) with kids this famous and so well brought up.

Daniel Radcliffe, Harry himself, has turned into a fine, cheeky youngster who has taken his clothes off onstage in the play, Equus, to display his cheeks. He must've made magic with his wand by now.

Rupert Grint, who plays sidekick Ron Weasley, looks buff now. He's got muscles under his tight Hogwarts Forever T-shirt.

He could star next as the Goofy Red-Haired Brit Fratboy in American Pie V or Harold & Kumar Go To Cambridge.

Emma Watson, a model for Burberry sweaters, which she fills out nicely, is actually, among the BFF threesome, most terribly likely to go to Cambridge or Yale or Harvard or wherever strikes her fancy.

Her Hermione is brainy and beautiful, but also forthright.

In Half-Blood Prince, she slams a pile of books on Caveman Ron's shoulder for: a) gobbling food up like a slob; b) having the hots for another gal; and c) not getting it in his thick head that she's really his girlfriend.

The greatest magic which J. K.

Rowling has wrought was to make me, an avid non-reader of her books, believe that classy Hermione and crass Ron are meant for each other when all along I thought that Harry was the better love wiz.

But it was not to be. In earlier movies, Master Potter turned out to be a rice guy like Nicolas Cage and Woody Allen when he snagged Asian chick Cho Chang.

Now, as you have read so far, there's good reason that people are describing this latest Potter movie as the one about, you know, love lives. Besides Potter- tastic phrases like "Dark Lord", "Chosen One", and "Dumbledore, may I recommend you a shaver?", the other word used quite judiciously in this movie is "snogging".

The juniors are referring to kissing.

And well they should. In real life, Rupert is 20 while Daniel and Emma are just 19. I love that wondrous age. It's the age when one of Sarah Palin's teenage daughters turned into an unwed mum.

It's the age where children - my children - turn into interesting young people as my hypothetical beard grows longer and longer and whiter and whiter.

But my favourite scene in Half-Blood Prince is when Hermione and Ron's new girlfriend, Lavender Brown, fight over him while he's lying on a hospital bed to the blatant exclusion of everybody around them.

"Oh, to be young and to feel love's keen sting," exults the wizened wizard Dumbledore.

That, I tell you, is a moment that is really quite magical.

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